szzsszzs wrote:Not a groundbreaking piece of news, but I can confirm that the original PSU fan of the O2 can be easily replaced by a practically noiseless Noctua NF-R8-1800 fan.

Thanks for the little kick in the butt there ... quieting down the O2 has been a "back shelf" project for me for ages, this post finally triggered some action.

Yes, the Noctua is very quiet. Now I have to look at the green light to see if the computer is running. O2's aren't so noisy anyhow but still ... maybe the best ten bucks I've spent this year. Silent - good !

The original fan can move 80 m^3/h, but this one moves only 66% as much. The O2's PSU also adjusts the voltage of the fan according to the temperature, so it probably won't run the new fan at full speed because it's calibrated for the old one. [IIRC, there's a potentiometer inside the PSU to adjust this.]

The best way to see if it provides proper cooling would be to get a few of those cheap $2 thermometers from eBay, attach the sensors to various chips inside the O2 (CPU, CRIME, MACE, GBE), run the O2 for a few hours at full load and write down the temperatures, then replacing the fan and repeating the process.Anything over 70°C is probably very unhealthy.

I did something similar with an Arctic F8 TC, though I rigged it to run at max speed instead of being temp controlled. Still inaudible though, andwith a Fujitsu MAS3036NC disk (36GB 15K), the system is silent. Spec is R7K/350, 512MB. To reduce power consumption even more (it's justa gateway machine), the unit has no AV module and no CDROM. Keep meaning to install a Gbit NIC, not gotten round to it yet though.

Ian.

I'm working on a charitable PC build for the Learn Engineering YouTube channel. Please PM/email/call if you'd like to contribute!Donations of any kind of item I can sell to provide funds are also most welcome.mapesdhs@yahoo.com+44 (0)7434 635 121

I didn't do anything, just connected it up as normal and that's it. Note that nowadays I use the other version of the F8 which doesn't have the temp control, so no need to meddle with the cable.

To clarify: I've never used the Noctua that's the subject of this thread, I use the Arctic F8 instead. Basically the same idea though.

Sad to report though I stopped using the O2 as a gateway a while ago, as I couldn't get the Phobos GigE card working properly, and I wanted better speed than 100Mbit. Thus, I built a Zenyal-based uATX box with a simple uATX board (and Intel model that has two GigE ports), Pentium G2020, silent fans, etc. However, I've done further fan mods since then for other people.

Ian.

I'm working on a charitable PC build for the Learn Engineering YouTube channel. Please PM/email/call if you'd like to contribute!Donations of any kind of item I can sell to provide funds are also most welcome.mapesdhs@yahoo.com+44 (0)7434 635 121